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January 21, 2010

Seeking to make campuses safer, by making them less safe

The CSU campuses in Fort Collins and Pueblo are about to lose a rare status among public colleges these days: a place where students are free to carry concealed weapons.

Colorado State University administrators
released a draft weapons-control policy Wednesday that would ban all
firearms from campus.

And while CSU's Board of Governors is expected to enact the policy
at its Feb. 23 meeting, student leaders say they won't give up their
right to carry concealed weapons on the Fort Collins and Pueblo
campuses without having another say in the issue.

Kudos to the student government for standing up for the rights of their constituents--when's the last time you heard of that happening? But they face an uphill battle, as the gun-controllers have statistics on their side:

In December, student government leaders
argued that concealed weapons would keep them safer by discouraging
attacks similar to the one at Virginia Tech in 2007, when Virginia Tech
senior Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people.

But the CSU faculty and the school's governors sided with the
International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators,
which said in 2008 that there is no statistical credible evidence
demonstrating that laws allowing the carrying of concealed weapons
reduce crime.

Well, that's a relief! I'm sure that if CSU students are ever trapped in a classroom with some violent psychopath, they'll cite statistics to keep them safe. They're certainly easier to carry than a gun!